Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president in 1994. He took office after the country’s first fully inclusive democratic general election, held from 26 to 29 April that year.
Mandela’s African National Congress won the election with 62.65 percent of the national vote. The result ended the apartheid-era system of legally enforced racial segregation and white minority rule. Mandela was inaugurated on 10 May 1994 in Pretoria.
Although Mandela became president, the election did not make him South Africa’s first head of government from the African majority in every historical sense; it made him the first president chosen through the new democratic order and the first Black holder of the country’s presidency. He served one term and was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki in 1999.